[Gary Albach]

My neighbour has taken an interest in refinishing furniture and so I gave him the cabinet from a Canadian General Electric KM-60 (also sold as an RCA A24) for practice. He stripped and sanded it, filled the holes, toned it back to its original colours, put on a new decal (a couple tries like we’ve all done), applied half a dozen coats of lacquer, rubbed it out with #0000 steel wool and paste wax, shined the knobs, and made little labels for the buttons. I think he did a great job.

I recapped the chassis for him and made a simple stereo/mono mixer cord (2 x 100 ohm resistors in a little in-line cardboard tube). The radio sounds particularly good with his smartphone plugged into the phono input.

Gary A. in Victoria

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   CGE-KM60_RCA-A24-original.jpg
   

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   CGE-KM60_RCA-A24.jpg
   

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   Stereo-Mono-Mixer.jpg
   

[Dan Walker]

Very very nice.
It does not look like the same radio.
The grill cloth looks good on that radio.
You should get him to do all your cabinet work,or show you how he does it.
Dan in calgary

[Gary Albach]

Thanks, Dan. Are my cabinet restorations really that bad!
Cheers,
Gary

[Dan Walker]

Hi Gary.
I did not mean that your cabinet restorations were bad at all. Sorry it came out that way.
I guess I presumed that you didn’t do cabinets MY MISTAKE.
Post a couple of your cabinets and them I hope I will remember.
Sorry
Dan in Calgary

[Gary Albach]

Hi Dan – I was just kidding when I mentioned cabinet restoration, although I must admit that I have had to learn far more about furniture refinishing than about electronic restoration since rejoining this hobby some years ago. Of three aspects of our hobby, i.e. cabinet restoration, chassis restoration, and assembling a unified ‘collection’, and given my distant background in electronics, I lean towards the love to restore a chassis to its original detailed factory ‘look and performance’. It’s my wife who better appreciates the time and effort that goes into refinishing a cabinet, as this is what she looks at!

Last winter I posted pictures of a few cabinets that I had finished, and by going back in the forums you can see them listed as:

A Hat Trick! Electrohome Viking finished
Addison Model 5A restored
RCA Victor Model 122 restored

Keep up the great work – I enjoy seeing the beautiful pictures!
Cheers,
Gary in Victoria

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